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Stockpiling enough food to keep you and your family alive for a long time can be very challenging. Think about it: However much you spend on your weekly shopping trip is how much a week’s worth of emergency food could cost. And that’s just one week.
There’s a reason certain foods have remained so popular among preppers and survivalists. Rice and beans, for example. They have a long shelf-life, they’re filling, and they’re good for you. These foods will always make the cut, while others are best reserved for softer times. (Sorry, salad lovers.)
In this article, we’re going to take a look at the fifteen most popular survival foods and talk about why they’re so popular. If you’re preparing for a disaster, consider getting every one of these.
Note: Normally when listing products, I would link to them on Amazon.com, but almost all of these foods are cheaper at stores like Costco or Sam’s Club. I highly recommend you purchase these foods at stores like those.
The prices I mention are based on the prices I’ve seen at my local Sam’s Club in Florida. Other stores around the country might be more expensive.
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1. Beans
Beans are filling and affordable. They’re also, easy to store, high in nutrients, have an indefinite shelf life, and are easily one of the most popular survival foods. As an added bonus, you can plant some of your beans and grow more.
2. Canned Soup
The biggest advantage of canned soup is the convenience. Most people heat it up first, but you don’t even have to do that. Canned soup can be eaten/drank straight from the can for a quick and easy meal. Just make sure you buy soups your family actually likes.
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3. Canned Tuna
Tuna is a great survival food and one of the few meat products that made this list. For meats, spoilage is a real problem, but tuna has a great shelf life and will last up to five years unopened, making it a great source of tasty protein in a disaster situation.
4. Coconut Oil
Oil is essential for cooking a large number of foods. Unfortunately, most oils don’t have a long enough shelf life. Coconut oil, on the other hand, can last up to two years before it begins to spoil.
If you’re planning on frying food post-disaster, coconut oil is your best choice. As an added bonus, it’s one of the healthiest oils you can cook with, and it has many other uses.
5. Coffee
Surviving after a disaster takes a lot of energy, which means you should learn how to make coffee when the power is out. Fortunately, coffee has a long shelf-life and is affordable enough to set aside a huge supply for rough times.
6. Cornmeal
Instead of storing flour for your post-disaster baking needs, consider storing cornmeal instead. Cornmeal can be used in place of flour in most recipes, plus it has a longer shelf life.
While flour requires yeast and oil to make biscuits or bread, cornbread and tortillas made from flour can be baked without these things and come out nicely when cooked in a solar oven or one a skillet.
7. Honey
Honey isn’t all that cheap, which makes buying it in bulk a tough pill to swallow for frugal preppers. However, honey can be used to add a nice boost of calories and flavor to a meal, it’s one of the few sweets with an indefinite shelf life, and it’s good for you. As long as you use it sparingly, a little honey will go a long way.
8. Lard
Last year I made a list of 20 reasons lard is the best survival food. You can use it for deep frying food, making candles, making pemmican, making soap, lubricating equipment, preventing blisters, as a butter substitute in any recipe, and much more.
9. Pasta
If you think the post-apocalypse is going to be completely void of your favorite foods, celebrate the fact that pasta is one of the most popular survival foods. Use it to make spaghetti, fettuccine alfredo, mac and cheese, or whatever you want.
10. Peanut Butter
Peanut butter is filling, affordable, high in protein, and has a long shelf life (even after opened), allowing preppers to stock up on bulk amounts of peanut butter without going broke.
11. Popcorn
Popcorn is such a great snack. It’s good for you (unless you add a ton of oil and butter), and popcorn kernels can last for decades when stored properly. If any of your family likes popcorn, you owe it to them to stock up on it.
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12. Ramen Noodles
If college students can survive on Ramen noodles for four years, so can you. They’re not very nutritious, but they are incredibly cheap and tasty enough to add a little variety to your food cache. Plus, they can last for years.
13. Rice
For a huge portion of the world, rice is a daily staple, supplying the majority of people’s nutritional needs. It’s easy to store, it’s one of the cheapest foods you can buy, and it lasts for decades if you store it properly.
14. Salt
There was a time when salt was one of the most valuable things a person could own. While it may not have the same value this day and age, salt is still an irreplaceable food item to have in a post-collapse world.
It can be used to clean clothes, kill weeds, melt ice, preserve meat, soothe sore oats, and many other things, not to mention vastly improving the taste of bland foods.
15. Sugar
You HAVE to stockpile sugar. I’m not saying you should make it a huge part of your diet, but sugar is a crucial ingredient for almost any dessert you can imagine.
Conclusion
If you haven’t already started purchasing these foods in bulk, it’s time to get started. Join Costco or Sam’s Club and get started. You’ll find you can put away a lot of food for less money than you’d think.
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Don’t know when you wrote this article, but it is now the end of 2022 and your prices are completely out of whack. It was nice to see cornmeal on your list instead of wheat flour. Flour can also be made from grinding oatmeal or rice which both store well. Make sure to only store what you will eat or it is a total waste of money and storage space. Dried peas and lentils should also be on your list. Canned chicken, ham and salmon are also good to have on hand. I prefer to get as much nutrition as possible, not just empty calories.
i would recommend Mackerel/and or Salmon, also canned chicken or turkey for something different at times. I would get tiring to be eating the same thing all the time.
We don’t eat Ramen noodles. After my son got some bad ones no one would touch it. I never liked them anyway. The sodium level is too high and the whole family has high blood pressure. I would add some sort of candy for a treat. I like what is bulls eyes. They are a candy from my childhood and since I have been eating them for 70 years they have not hurt me. I don’t eat a whole lot at a time,
If you chose to use lard; Render it yourself. The one you see in tubs at the grocery Has preservatives in it.
Read the ingredient label. If it’s been hydrogenated; it has TRANSFATS in it. Plus it might be bleached.
You can buy ORGANIC lard. It does not have all that other stuff in it. It’s just rendered pig fat. it was processed the way they did it 300 years ago. There are prepper articles on rendering your own lard. I have found them on Pintrest.
I was amazed at the price quoted for coconut oil. I’ve found one gallon jugs of coconut oil at Big Lots for $12.
We have stockpiled/stored #10 cans, pantry sized cans, and packages of freeze dried and dehydrated foods from Ready Store and Augason Farms, including Mountain House packable pouches and MREs. They both have a wide variety of foods with a 25 or more year shelf life (depending upon your storage conditions) and which are really good. Price comparable with others, long storage life, very tasty, and yes we have tried them. For long time storage and emergencies these are great products. No, I am not being compensated for my recommendation. Look at their websites and reviews.
Ramen must have an oily costing. because it goes rancid before a year.
Karen:Possibly you are having a problem with how you’re storing the
Ramen.Our group eats Ramen several times a month and have never
found it to be oily.
FYI Instant Lunch and Cup A Noodles only require boiling water,whereas Ramen needs to cook for a while.
I have seen whole flats of ramen eaten away by mealworms or rancid. I don’t know how to store it besides leaving it in the wrapper it’s sold in. What do you do?
You could try vacuum sealing them .
A note on coconut oil is that it’s not as healthy as previously thought.
It’s very high in saturated fats, about 90%.
I’d use coconut oil sparingly. Most of the research so far has consisted of short-term studies to examine its effect on cholesterol levels. We don’t really know how coconut oil affects heart disease. And I don’t think coconut oil is as healthful as vegetable oils like olive oil and soybean oil, which are mainly unsaturated
Saturated fats don’t cause heart disease; the research which reported that link was sponsored by the sugar industry. Seriously, not a spurious claim. A quick look will reveal the fairly recent (within the last 2 years) headlines when that scandal broke.
Other studies which implicated saturated fat, red meat and cholesterol were done using animals raised in confined animal factory operations (CAFOs). These animals lived in overcrowded conditions, fed the worst possible foodstuffs like moldy grains unfit for human consumption, treated with genetically-modified growth hormones, constantly exposed to diseases and kept “healthy” by antibiotics. Such animals could be expected to be loaded with stress-hormone-related epigenetic mutations as well as bacteria, fungi and residual antibiotics in their tissues.
Many of these same studies have been replicated using pasture-grazed animals not treated with antibiotics nor fed growth hormones, and the results have disproven the results of the earlier studies. The newer research proves that animals raised humanely and fed their natural diet (in the case of cows, it’s grass not grain) are healthy food sources and do not cause heart disease. The studies also prove by inference just how awful is the life of CAFO animals and how unhealthy they are for us as food sources.
The human brain needs saturated fats and cholesterol to be healthy; animal fats are the food our ancestors ate. Chieftains and honored guests/hunters were the people who were allowed to eat the fat. Ever heard the phrase, “the fat of the land”? The fat of the land is the best it has to offer, not the disease it has to offer.
When planning for long-term survival, don’t plan on replacing animal fat with unsaturated vegetable oils or you’ll end up depressed, low-energy and suffering from decreased mental abilities. I know this will infuriate the vegans among the readership here, and they’ll respond with lots of links to studies written by other vegans about how holy and wonderful the vegan life is, but you will find if you look deeper that it’s a simple fact that humans require some saturated fats, preferably animal fats, to remain mentally sharp and physically vigorous.
Way too many studies have been done that prove that saturated fats are bad for the cardio-vascular system. All you have to do is seen an autopsy on an obese person to see the plaque lining the walls of their blood vessels and around the heart muscle! Yes, the brain needs some cholesterol but there are safer ways to get it. Be moderate in all things will increase safety. (As far as our ancestors, they got a lot of exercise, especially when hunting, far more than we do today!) And their game was natural. Regular, effective exercise is one of the valuable things lacking in today’s world! It keeps muscles working, keeps the digestive tract moving so it can’t pile up harmful elements, and is also good for mental health! Half of the hype you see and hear today is solely MONEY-MAKING for people who want an easy out instead of eating healthy and normal on a CONTINUED basis! Diets are silly because people will relapse back to their old style of eating and regain the weight.
It’s not not we are all going to get fat on ANYTHING be it if SHTF. Keep it real and quit trying to be a health guru.
I say olive oil is the way to go as far as oil goes
By all means in a survival situation, eat only the healthiest foods so you can die healthy. Survival.
Brown rice and beans together form a complete protein, a substitute for meat. And a lot cheaper, too. I eat from what I have in storage, and replace and rotate 4 times a year.
Sadly, brown rice is not great for long term storage. The bran in it tends to go rancid. To extend the brown rice that you have, keep it in the freezer until that is no longer an option. Cornmeal and beans also make a complete protein. Whole wheat and beans as well……… Many of the amino acids our body can produce. There are a few that our body cannot. Sadly, the only vegan source that I have found that is a complete stand along protein is soy……. Fine if you can handle all that estrogen……. Now, just about anything in moderation isn’t all that bad for any of us!
in ref to — Rob says
October 19, 2017 at 3:15 pm
Thanks for the tips! But I have a question, at what temperature can these products be left at as I live in Canada where minus 25 degrees is a common thing.
The ONLY thing on the list which I would have an issue with storing at – 25F or colder is the tuna … the article sadly did not specify what the tuna was packed in [water or oil] if oil it can stand colder than packed in water. Also if given a choice I would pick the oil packed over water as for the same weight in my pack you get more food value… btw everything else on that list could be put into a freezer safely.
Honey offers the additional virtue of being a good anti-bacterial agent. It’s been used for millennia to heal infected wounds. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing, especially in hard times.
Coffee isn’t a survival food as it has very little nutrional value(a couple micro nutrients),better choice is cocoa powder,good amount of calories,real moral booster(actually effects pleasure center of brain) and should have long shelf life.
Coconut oil is only a fair choice,Ghee(clarified butter)may be a better choice,better taste and properly prepared has much longer shelf life especially at higher temperature(used throughout the middle east/India for that reason)
The mind is as important as the body. Coffee is so pervasive in our culture, it would behoove anyone to keep a large supply on hand as a moral booster. If you don’t think situations that require to use “survival rations” will have a negative effect on your moral, you need to reevaluate if you want to live on this planet. Coffee will go a long way to helping get through tough times. I lived in bush Alaska alone for a long, long time. Sometimes I wouldn’t see anyone for three months at a time. It was those long dark days when it was difficult to just get up out of bed that coffee was there for me, waiting, like a long lost friend. Get some coffee. If you don’t drink it, someone else will and will be mighty glad you thought to store some.
While I agree coffee and Tea aren’t survival Foods per se, they do have a high morale value in a survival situation, as well as value as a stimulant (caffeine).
Both Coffee and Tea are high value barter items as well.
I agree Cocoa powder is a good ingredient to add to supplies lists, because it does have nutritional value as well as that morale value mentioned.
Cocoa, mixed with dried milk and sugar or honey, and you have a quick warm drink to perk you up when the chips are down.
Peanut butter is good stored for much longer than a year, coconut oil and corn meal lasts a lot linger also, if unopened and stored properly.
Thanks for the tips! But I have a question, at what temperature can these products be left at as I live in Canada where minus 25 degrees is a common thing.
Suggestions??
Invest in a good manual grain grinder. Wheat and corn, as grains, lasts infinitely longer than the ground product. Grind flour and cornmeal as needed. You can buy both, in resealable buckets. You can get things like Rye, different kinds of wheat, corn, sorghum, barley, rice – which can also be ground into rice flour – and several other kinds of grains.
Good advice, thanks!